Kolthoff, Izaak Maurits (1894–1993)

Izaak Maurits Kolthoff was a professor of analytical chemistry at the University of Minnesota from 1927 to 1962. He published over a thousand papers, wrote more than a dozen books, and created and edited the first comprehensive treatise of analytical chemistry. He also played a key part in the development of synthetic rubber during and after World War II. He is known as the “father of modern analytical chemistry.”

Labor Lyceum and Workmen’s Circle

A small, committed group of Jewish immigrants raised the funds needed to build the Labor Lyceum at 1426 Sixth Avenue North in Minneapolis in 1915. The two-story brick and stucco building was a hub for radical Jewish cultural, political, and social activities for the next thirty-five years.

HOW EDUCATION HAS SHAPED THE STATE

Learning in the Land of Lakes: Minnesota’s Education History

The founders of the United States—anxious about the fragile republican experiment they’d embarked on—knew that the nation needed an educated citizenry. They did not know, however, how to get there. The American decision to educate its citizens at public expense was an idea as radical as the revolution itself. The story of public education in Minnesota, then, tells about the aspiration, invention, and development of a great national idea into a state-wide practice and about women’s key role in carrying out that great idea.

Macalester College

Founded in 1874, Macalester College began as a Presbyterian college with few resources and only six students. The private liberal arts college became known for its rigorous academics and commitment to internationalism, multiculturalism, and service to society.

Mankato State Normal School controversy, 1873

In August 1872, Julia Sears (1839–1929) was hired to head the Mankato State Normal School. Upon taking the job, she became the first woman to hold such a position of power in a coeducational institution of higher learning in the United States. Her leadership challenged traditional gender roles at teachers’ colleges but led to controversy when the local school board replaced her with a man.

Minnesota Machinery Museum

When Hanley Falls School closed in the late 1970s, a few local residents saw an opportunity. Committed to sharing the history of their community, they transformed the white, two-story building on the town square into the Minnesota Machinery Museum. Since 1980, the museum has collected vintage farm equipment and created exhibits celebrating the history and agricultural tradition of Yellow Medicine County.

Minnesota Public School Fund

In 1854, the United States took the mineral-rich lands of northeastern Minnesota Territory from the Ojibwe Nation after the signing of the Treaty of La Pointe. Four years later, it granted to the new state of Minnesota sections 16 and 36 of every one of its townships, either to be held in trust or leased to support state schools. Close to three million acres were dedicated to a public school trust fund, and the iron ore and forest lands of the Ojibwe generated over 85 percent of its value. In 2017, it is worth over a billion dollars.

Minnesota State Public School for Dependent and Neglected Children

The Minnesota State Public School for Dependent and Neglected Children operated from 1886 to 1947. The campus is one of the most intact examples of a state cottage school standing in the United States, and is significant on a national level.

Minnesota State University, Mankato

Minnesota State University, Mankato, was founded as Minnesota's second normal school in 1868. It went through phases as a normal school, teachers college, college, and university. By 2011 it was one of Minnesota's largest and most comprehensive universities.

Morrill Hall Takeover, University of Minnesota

Black students at the University of Minnesota staged a twenty-four-hour protest at Morrill Hall, the school’s administrative building, in 1969. The demonstration led to the creation of the university’s Afro-American Studies Department.

Myers, Ruth A. (1926–2001)

Ruth A. Myers was known as the “grandmother of American Indian education in Minnesota.” A persistent voice for Native children and their families, Myers focused on education policy as well as learning opportunities for Native students. She also produced curricula and resource materials that reflected Native American history and culture for all Minnesota learners.

Native American Boarding Schools

Native American boarding schools, which operated in Minnesota and across the United States beginning in the late nineteenth century, represent a dark chapter in U.S. history. Also called industrial schools, these institutions prepared boys for manual labor and farming and girls for domestic work. The boarding school, whether on or off a reservation, carried out the government's mission to restructure Native people's minds and personalities by severing children’s physical, cultural, and spiritual connections to their tribes.

Nelson, Julia Bullard (1842–1914)

Following the death of her husband and their only child, Julia Bullard Nelson of Red Wing, Minnesota headed south to Texas in 1869 to teach African Americans in U.S. government-backed Freedmen's Bureau schools. Nelson spent the summers of the 1870s and 1880s in Minnesota, where she emerged as a state and national leader in the movement for women's suffrage and the temperance campaign against alcohol use.

Northeast Neighborhood House, Minneapolis

Constructed in Minneapolis in 1919, the Northeast Neighborhood House (NENH) served both as a portal into American society for newly arrived immigrants from Eastern Europe and as an advocate for the neighborhood's underprivileged. It is a notable example of a social institution created solely for the betterment of the disadvantaged.

Oregon Trail (computer game)

First imagined in 1971 by Minnesota student teachers, Oregon Trail went on to become the longest-published and most successful educational game of all time. As of 2017, more than 65 million copies have been sold worldwide, and the game that began on a teletype machine remains popular in a version designed for smartphones.

Origins of Hamline University

In 1854, a group of Methodist ministers founded Hamline University in Red Wing. It was the first college established in Minnesota Territory.

Origins of the Northwest School of Agriculture (NWSA), 1905–1940

By the late 1890s, bonanza farming had stopped bringing good incomes to large landowners. Immigrants who arrived in northwestern Minnesota learned quickly that the Red River Valley soil was some of the richest in the state. An experiment station was started in 1895 that led to the founding of a boarding high school to train young people to work on farms as farmers and homemakers.

Origins of the School Safety Patrol, 1921

St. Paul's school safety patrol–one of the earliest in the country–was first implemented in 1921. Parents, principals, and politicians in the city were at the forefront of its development. At that time, walking to and from school was dangerous because there were many cars on the roads and few safety guidelines. Children often took risks when crossing streets, and placing other children at intersections to direct traffic was a key innovation that reduced accidents.

Origins of the University of Minnesota Extension Service

The Agricultural Extension Service of the United States (AES) began as an educational component of land-grant universities. In Minnesota as in other states, the federally funded and organized services of AES provide practical agricultural training to people outside of a university setting.

Pillsbury Hall, University of Minnesota

Designed by Leroy Buffington and Harvey Ellis in the Richardsonian Romanesque style, Pillsbury Hall at the University of Minnesota opened in 1889 and is part of the National Register-listed Old Campus Historic District.

Pillsbury, John Sargent (1827–1901)

In forty-six years as a Minnesotan, John Sargent Pillsbury helped establish what eventually became one of the world's largest flour-milling businesses, served three terms as governor, and contributed—generously and often anonymously—to numerous causes he deemed worthy.

Pipestone Indian Training School Baseball Team

Pipestone Indian Training School—a boarding school in Pipestone, Minnesota, for Dakota and Ojibwe boys and girls—fielded popular and often successful student baseball teams from 1893 until the 1920s.

Private Schools in Carver County

Early schools in Carver County were typical of those found in nineteenth-century Minnesota. Schools were small then and grew out of the community's desire to educate local children. They were often held in the same building as the church or town meeting hall, and had ties to both. For this reason, they were not clearly public or private.

Public Schools in Carver County

Early schools in Minnesota were one-room schoolhouses. The first school in Carver County, built in 1855, was one of these. It became part of the first school district in Minnesota, Public School District #1 in Carver, which was formed in 1856.

Quie, Halvor Halvorson (1834–1919)

An early settler-colonist in Wheeling Township (Rice County), Norwegian immigrant Halvor Quie is often remembered as a member of the Second Company of Minnesota Sharpshooters during the Civil War. He was instrumental in local religious and educational affairs and offered lasting support to St. Olaf College.

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